Bush: plunderer and rapist of America

I quote: 'In a stunning, relatively overlooked area of the southern Sierras, just east of California Hot Springs and the south valley town of Porterville, the Forest Service is facilitating one of the most rotten deals in the recent, rotten history of logging on public lands. And these are not just any public lands but a National Monument established in 2000 to protect giant Sequoias, in large part by prohibiting timber cutting and restoring the lands to their primeval condition.'

And: 'The Forest Service's proposal calls for 180 clearcuts of up to two acres in size, in the belief that sequoias benefit from sunny openings in the forest. But studies by the University of California on a state forest have found far, far fewer seedlings on logged sequoia stands than in areas subject to normal wildfires.'

This forest houses two thirds of the world's oldest trees. The trees require heat from fires to release seeds, so the reasoning behind the Bush administration's proposal is flawed, but then science has not been a great influence on this Texan grandee and his jesters, as the global-warming and evolution debates have shown.

Is there going to be a single, decent bequest from this appalling administration? Will people look back on this period and be able to think of one fine achievement that had future generations in mind? The war on terror? Hardly. It's worse now than it was in 2001: Bush has done little on the home front. Fewer wars? Iraq, Lebanon ... A safer, more beautiful environment? Probably not. Bush has only ever contributed to one cause: the ever-increasing prosperity of a tiny number of the wealthiest people and corporations the world has ever known. And yet still some of the poorest people in America believe that he is a moral, God-fearing man. What more do Bush and his administration, who for me are the epitome of greed and self-interest, have to do?